That's with 8.67 ticks every 1sec (effectively). It's like having 12 DOTs rolling (6 GCDs -- due to CA) for the price of 6 DOTs (3 GCDs -- due to CA.) That's what's making me grumble.

Isn't that the intended effect of the changes anyway? To prevent us from ONLY dotting and SS on multi target fights or at least reduce the effectiveness. At least we still have CA to pop during multi target encounters to quickly double dot and chain cast SS (as proven by your Maths above!).

Those numbers sounds perfectly fine for me. I like having a bit too little procs and being balanced around that instead of having a mountain of procs where half of which are wasted.

And while CA is up, doesn't slightly more procs go wasted as you have 6 pairs of dots ticking at the exactly same time meaning when both of them activate Shooting Stars, the other one gets overwritten immediately?

Isn't that the intended effect of the changes anyway? To prevent us from ONLY dotting and SS on multi target fights or at least reduce the effectiveness. At least we still have CA to pop during multi target encounters to quickly double dot and chain cast SS (as proven by your Maths above!).

It even shows that they might have undershot their target, since we only need 6 DoTs to still do nothing but chaining SS and DoTs.

At this point, I think we could greatly benefit from extended DoT duration. 18-20 sec MF/SF could in theory help us offset the nerf to proc chance by giving us more bang for each GCD we spend dotting. They just buffed almost every other caster DoT out there, it would just go with the flow.

Not the most exciting of solutions, but unless math proves me wrong, I believe it would be a happy middle -regardless of a much needed buff to Hurricane.

This would make refreshing a little awkward, no? Currently I can just refresh in each new eclipse, extending them to 20 seconds could mean I've gone to a new eclipse and moving out of it when it's refresh time.

To give you an idea of what sort of difference we're talking about -- 12 DOTs in 5.3 is expected to proc ~24 times in a 25sec window. Since CA is used, we can cut down the window by the number of GCDs saved (6)... so... 24 procs in 19sec. Given no SS changes and 4pc included...we'd expected 30 procs! We're expecting 10 procs in 19sec in 5.4 (12 procs with 4pc) for the same situation. It seems like the multi-dotting niche is dead, though my numbers seemed strong on the PTR test...it's only CA carrying me (the fight itself is design well for a CA opener. It's not that the damage is low, it's just a complete playstyle change (less SS procs than T14 basically). For a band-aid fix, it's not bad...I just hope this doesn't become the multi-dotting model in 6.0

How come every class/spec that bitches and whines gets attention and changes and Boomkins all they got so far is band-aid fixes, broken mechanics and polite "fuck-off"s. GC even came around and told us that there never was any active mitigation plans, right in our faces.

I'm just frustrated that every week a new class comes up in the Blue Tracker and it always has Dev responses and plans to fix them on the way.

How come every class/spec that bitches and whines gets attention and changes and Boomkins all they got so far is band-aid fixes, broken mechanics and polite "fuck-off"s. GC even came around and told us that there never was any active mitigation plans, right in our faces.

I'm just frustrated that every week a new class comes up in the Blue Tracker and it always has Dev responses and plans to fix them on the way.

Trust me, every class has a huge list of complaints, nothing is perfect atm. Spend 2 minutes on the hunter forum and you'll see a hundred posts moaning about their shitty dps. Or look at the mage forun where it's pretty much "QQ level 90 talents QQ frost isnt top dps QQ no raid utility" etc. To be honest Boomkins are in a good spot for heroic progression, there's some things that ofc be changed for QoL but, I'm happy.

How come every class/spec that bitches and whines gets attention and changes and Boomkins all they got so far is band-aid fixes, broken mechanics and polite "fuck-off"s. GC even came around and told us that there never was any active mitigation plans, right in our faces.

I'm just frustrated that every week a new class comes up in the Blue Tracker and it always has Dev responses and plans to fix them on the way.

Pls don't whine, just don't. Else you'll be just like all those warlock Mage shammy monk warrior hunter death knight priest pally and rogue whiners out there. It serves absolutely no purpose coming here and whining.

No class is perfect, but none of the classes are imperfect to the point of being unplayable. I don't understand why people have to be so negative all the time and start whining every time a patch comes around. And its not even like balance druids are dead last on most fights. Entitlement issues I guess ..

No class is perfect, but none of the classes are imperfect to the point of being unplayable.

I dare you to enter an arena or RBG after the patch. As of now, you are basically doing so with a +15% damage received from all sources... Sorry, 90% of all sources.

Likewise, enter a challenge mode and see your damage 20-30% behind everyone else's. I am 8/9 gold now (hopefully 9/9 this weekend) and I completed all of them as bear, out of sheer practicality. Could I have completed them as moonkin? I bet. It just was not fun at all, and at the end of the day, I was a hindrance rather than an asset. I do not care if my class is "playable", that is not enough.

Whining is not constructive, but a certain degree of frustration spillage is understandable. I think you are perfectly entitled to see a 30% buff to Howling Blast, the 1-button spam AoE, and ask yourself questions, and yes, whine a little. The "everything's going to be peachy" attitude is just as tiresome as whining.

I dare you to enter an arena or RBG after the patch. As of now, you are basically doing so with a +15% damage received from all sources... Sorry, 90% of all sources.

Likewise, enter a challenge mode and see your damage 20-30% behind everyone else's. I am 8/9 gold now (hopefully 9/9 this weekend) and I completed all of them as bear, out of sheer practicality. Could I have completed them as moonkin? I bet. It just was not fun at all, and at the end of the day, I was a hindrance rather than an asset. I do not care if my class is "playable", that is not enough.

Whining is not constructive, but a certain degree of frustration spillage is understandable. I think you are perfectly entitled to see a 30% buff to Howling Blast, the 1-button spam AoE, and ask yourself questions, and yes, whine a little. The "everything's going to be peachy" attitude is just as tiresome as whining.

Are you seriously suggesting challenge mode dps as a good measure of dps to compare amongst dps specs when we are in the last patch of the expansion? Do you honestly believe that's the metric around which blizzard balances dps ? Or are you just trying to argue for the sake of arguing? Just go and play a fire Mage in CMs and see how is that. Just don't come back and conclude that fire mages are useless and do shit dps else you will get laughed out of these forums.

I feel like you are just asking to be god mode in every single aspect of this game without any effort and that is unreasonable. Also if you want to whine, do it privately or something. I think I speak for the majority when I say that I dislike coming to these forums and hearing something along the lines of "mommy, they buffed dks/hunters/warlocks, why no buff for me".

Are you seriously suggesting challenge mode dps as a good measure of dps to compare amongst dps specs when we are in the last patch of the expansion? Do you honestly believe that's the metric around which blizzard balances dps ? Or are you just trying to argue for the sake of arguing? Just go and play a fire Mage in CMs and see how is that. Just don't come back and say fire mages are useless and do low dps else you will get laughed out of these forums.

I feel like you are just asking to be god mode in every single aspect of this game and that is unreasonable. Also if you want to whine, do it privately or something. I think I speak for the majority when I say that I dislike coming to these forums and hearing something along the lines of "mommy, they buffed dks/hunters/warlocks, why no buff for me".

While challenge modes aren't meant to showcase the best spec, the new "Realm Best" achievements mock the specs who aren't built for dungeons-quality gear. No matter what your skill level is, so long as you're competent enough to press a single-button, a Moonkin can NEVER beat an Elemental Shaman in CMs. Could you imagine the uproar if CL only had a moderate chance to jump to nearby targets? "IM GETTING NO PROCS WTF BLIZZ HALP." Same idea, but classes/specs are different, so it's just hyberbole.

Blizzard's design is "you cannot be good at everything" (on a per-spec basis.) It would be hard to dispute this, but Moonkin were getting "good at everything." I've said it many times before -- prior to 5.4 SS changes, we were easily the most versatile spec. Our AOE sucked, but everything else was very good (multi-target, single-target) or manageable with smart play (forced movement). That covers the major damage models... we still have one of the strongest burst potentials. We have extremely competitive single-target output (we never should top meters, but we can easily compete with the non-outlier specs).

Unfortunately, the SS change hurt our multi-target severely, hurts our movement DPS heavily if the event lasts too long (3sec or longer). Frustration is fine, even if it seems like you're crying over it. But pointing fingers gets annoying. I've been trying to do my best to inform people of how our playstyles would be effected by using math from 5.3 and 5.4 figures. It's the sort of thing people want to see and learn about when they come into a discussion--people discussing the patch notes and how the changes will change how we play. "I don't like this change because CLASS/SPEC got buffed." To which myself and others gave the reply "Oh well, here's what you do today, here's what you should expect tomorrow. Discuss."

Giving your thoughts is perfectly fine, but at least try to justify them without blaming others. If you failed a math test when few others failed, your teacher shouldn't be fired. If you and the vast majority of your math class fail, your teacher is to blame. (back in high school, I was one of only 3 students to pass a geometry course because our teacher didn't teach us anything (40 students in total, 3 passed). Sometimes you just need to help yourself and learn on your own. Even if everyone else failed said course, I was able to get by. So rather than mope about what happening, try to make the best of it, and learn to play. -- And yes, this "my entire class failed except us three" story is true -- US Education under "No Child Left Behind" was a failure -- my class was proof of it. [The people who passed had tutoring.])

Well put cyous, I agree with your thoughts. Looking over your Maths, it seems like at the worst case realistic scenario, we get approximately 40-50% less procs from multi dotting. But looking at reported values of SS proc wastage in 5.3 bis (high 20s to 40s) I want to ask why do you think it's a "severe" nerf and will cause a total change in play style.

Didn't we already have high wastage %s in 5.3 bis ?i would classify this as a slight nerf to multi dotting to bring us back in line and prevent us from scaling out of control in 5.4. As you said, we are very versatile right now.

well if you take a look at the T16 BiS Thread you'll notice that we will actually have less crit in 5.4 BiS than we have now. And what the reduced proc chance really means is that we will go from pretty much always having a SS proc ready (with huge waste % ofc, but that doesn't really matter) to sometimes be able to spam SS when we have good RNG, and when we have bad RNG we can get long unlucky streaks of no procs. There will still be a pretty high waste %, you will just have unlucky streaks way more often than before.

It's always the problem of stat scalling during the content. Some time ago i have rerolled from a hunter (one of the worst scalling classes) to a boomkin (one of the best scalling classes). And there is always a problem when the new patch hits, and some classes got nerfed, and others got buffed.
Bllizard always said that, when the new patch hits, he tries to balance the classes for the new content. So as with 5.2 all the classes was almost the same with the gear of level 522-530 (the ones which were used for the ptr tests etc). But the better scaling classes moved ahead in 540-550 gear. So they need to be toned down in next expansion where the 550-560 gear needs to be taken in to account.

So as the expansion start boomkin was below average if it comes to dps, but was strong multitarget. But with current state and probably 5.4 its single target potential in on pair with the strongest classes, and multidotting is just out of control (on fight like council of elders). And with further state like this, with higher crit rating we would just be a SS machine guns. (with 540 gear on council i have casted my first wrath/starfire only after 2 bosses were dead allready which is just sick) Locks got their multidotting nerf, spriest are not as strong as we are etc, so i can understand the nerf. Now we will become typical single target class with nice 2 target cleave
Of course i would prefer to get a bit of dot damage buff instead of wrath/starfire but we will still rock the multitarget fights.

Of course it would be nice to have it the previous SS procs chance, and its a serious problem for gear <510 but as mentioned before, but in my opinion this change is needed for ilvl of 550+.
Challange Modes are different beast, and its a serious hit for them.
As for pvp, this a completely another story....

Our aoe is not bad, but it is just too difficlut to setup, which really needs some quality of life changes. Like Hurricane extending NG, buffing up Astral Storm a bit, or make it both like Rain of Fire but with reduced damage and scalling, making it actually useful on challanges, but not so great in current raids which could make them mandatory in single target rotation.

Now we will become typical single target class with nice 2 target cleave

Of course i would prefer to get a bit of dot damage buff instead of wrath/starfire but we will still rock the multitarget fights.
Our aoe is not bad

The problem with Crit is this:
- Haste doesn't do much for us. Breakpoints...yeah, whatever. Plays into Crit
- Mastery is terribly boring and provides nothing more than a predictable bonus.
- Crit extends DOTs (1 critical SS is worth nearly as much as a haste breakpoint). Crit procs Shooting Stars. Crit can potentially speed up the Eclipse cycling process. Great for movement.

Crit was simply our go-to stat all expansion because nothing else was actually good. Crit was too good actually. We debated over Haste vs. Crit in T14, but Haste lost because "lol what single-target fight?" Crit plays into our toolkit, Mastery and Haste are situational at best and still can't pull ahead of Crit in their most ideal situation.

If our Mastery was changed in 6.0 to reflect the proc rate of SS, we'd have a much, much more fluid and tame spellcasting system.
I've been running some more numbers on "Mastery: Shooting Stars" and if it was ( [10% Base] + [Mastery/616/100/3] ) (@ 15000 Mastery, we're at 23% proc rate). It's basically a third of our Mastery vale is converted into Shooting Stars proc rate. With the mastery, we can add bonuses to Eclipsed Damage and other spells. Mastery would be more involved with the spec, thus making it a numbers game against Crit. (Having too much of one stat means the other isn't going to be helpful, but having similar values tones done the scaling but increases the effectiveness)

Two-target cleave rarely exists anymore. Anything after 3 targets feels like a waste of time to DOT.

Our AOE is pretty bad. It's old. It simply does not function well with Nature's Grace. We're still tied to this dumb "Eclipses mustn't be equal" model which hardly promotes skill. Too many or too few procs lowers my AOE output by 20% -- seems like fun. Also, Hurricane is old.

Originally Posted by Mirri

Well put cyous, I agree with your thoughts. Looking over your Maths, it seems like at the worst case realistic scenario, we get approximately 40-50% less procs from multi dotting. But looking at reported values of SS proc wastage in 5.3 bis (high 20s to 40s) I want to ask why do you think it's a "severe" nerf and will cause a total change in play style.

Didn't we already have high wastage %s in 5.3 bis ?i would classify this as a slight nerf to multi dotting to bring us back in line and prevent us from scaling out of control in 5.4. As you said, we are very versatile right now.

High wastage means nothing in multi-dotting in TOT. All the change does for multi-dotting is make the need to press SS immediately even higher. SS-weaving was a viable "AOE" strat because we were able to maintain NG, Starfall, and super-buffed DOTs. With the nerfed cycling speed, it's...for a lack of a better word...re-learning the playstyle.

In addition to SS wastage theory, it's a massive nerf to multi-dotting because you're still losing out on SS as your main source of damage. SS proc rates in 5.3 weren't at "too fast to keep up" rates unless CA was active with 3+ targets. Even then, you're losing SS procs due to spending other GCDs DOTing other mobs (most of the time). It's a huge nerf when the number of DOTs hit 4+ each. 1 target, 2 targets, 3 targets, those numbers are still very favorable. 4+ dots...however...simply is not.

Cyous collate all your posts you've made make a new thread on the blizzard forums with some reasons, tweet them to ghostcrawler/lore other cms and hopefully you will get a decent reply as they won't bother replying to you on a multi page thread where all your really good posts are completely split up that has tons of just whine posts, this is atleast how other classes got replies.